One-time Torontonian Michael Potters has been announced as the chef at Cabin, a new upscale restaurant at Orangeville’s Hockley Valley Resort. In a release, Potters says the new restaurant will showcase “the emerging ‘Canadiana cuisine’ trend,” with ingredients from local farmers as well as the resort’s own two-acre fruit and vegetable garden. Potters has a lot of experience living off the land, having cooked up cattails at his own restaurant, Harvest, which he shuttered last November. He’s also known for his work at Milford Bistro and a stint in the ’90s at Rosewater Supper Club. The 70-seat dining room at Cabin features beams and hardwood floors reclaimed from an old barn, a 16-foot chandelier and a chef’s table where patrons can watch or interact with the man at work. Cabin fever starts on December 17.
The comprehensive index of every blog post, magazine story and restaurant review that appears on Torontolife.com
All stories relating to Rosewater Supper Club
Michael Potters keeps it rustic at Hockley Valley’s new restaurant Cabin
Do-gooders cavort to conga beats—with K’Naan—at the Hope Rising after-party
Alicia Keys, Ngozi Paul and K'naan (Image: George Pimentel)
May 3, Rosewater Supper Club. After-hours at the Rosewater usually means loose-tied Bay Street types swirling grand cru and planning their next hostile takeover—not the conga-beating, boogying and boisterous boozing that broke out at the after-party for the Stephen Lewis Foundation’s Hope Rising concert. Supporters poured into the decadent downtown resto following a fundraising show at the Sony Centre, which featured Alicia Keys, Rufus Wainwright, K’naan and Jully Black. The party peaked when a corps of conga drummers started playing along to the backbeat of the DJ set, enticing even the suits to shake a tail feather. Up on the mezzanine, K’naan was too preoccupied with fending off a throng of female fans to hit the dance floor. At the concert he’d brought fans onstage to sing his anthem “Wavin’ Flag”; mercifully, no sloppy renditions were attempted in his honour at the after-party.
Looking back at TIFF 2010: Nick Di Donato on how to throw a film festival party
Rick Campanelli hangs out at ET Canada's parking garage party
Nick Di Donato, president and CEO of Liberty Entertainment Group, is sitting in his newest Yorkville restaurant, Ciao, where just days ago Bill Gates broke bread with John Legend. Four storeys above is the parking lot that was transformed for four days into Entertainment Tonight Canada’s Festival Central, where a fab four-party weekend took place, all under Di Donato’s direction. The man behind the Rosewater Supper Club, Tattoo Rock Parlour, Spice Route and C Lounge—just to scratch the surface of his empire—and veteran of 15 TIFFs reflects on film festival parties past and present.
Read the rest of this entry »
Kyle Rae holds city-funded farewell bash? The Sun is there
Left to right (politically and visually): Kyle Rae, Rob Ford
Downtown city councillor Kyle Rae is bidding adieu to municipal politics after almost 20 years in the clamshell, and decided to hold a farewell party to mark the occasion. The fact that this party—held at the Rosewater Supper Club—is costing the city $12,000 irked the Toronto Sun, which has now spent most of this week following the story. Today’s offering ups the ante: the Sun quotes Rob Ford as saying Rae should repay the city and then resign. (Apparently, the fact that Rae is already leaving council isn’t enough.) Rae is quoted by the Sun responding thusly: “Who cares what Rob Ford thinks?”
Read the rest of this entry »
Fresh and Wild jumps on the “convenience food” bandwagon
As we reported a few months ago, the trend in food shopping is toward streamlined shops that offer prepared food for busy urbanites. Longo’s is doing it, Loblaws is doing it, Mark McEwan is doing it, and now Fresh and Wild is doing it. Construction is underway at the Distillery District location as Jason Rosso, ex-chef at Sassafraz and Rosewater Supper Club and currently the director of operations of the Distillery Restaurant Group, is giving the grocery store a makeover to make it more accessible to the neighbourhood, as well as to hungry travellers. “Our primary focus is on prepared foods, like roast chickens and oven-fresh pizzas. We also started a salad bar where you can pick and choose from 30 items.”
Read the rest of this entry »
A first look inside Paul Boehmer’s eponymous Ossington restaurant (and details of his new Dean and Deluca-esque retail shop)
Trend count: Fresh and local? Check. Communal table? Check. Ossington Avenue? Check. Designer lighting? Check (All photos by Karon Liu)
Paul Boehmer’s soon-to-open restaurant is like the cherry on top of the Ossington sundae. The eponymous eatery was one of the last to obtain a restaurant and bar permit before the city imposed a one-year moratorium on new establishments last May. “People around the neighbourhood thought that I was opening a nightclub, but since I told them it wasn’t the case, I haven’t received any complaints,” says the former Stadtländer apprentice, who has also cooked at Rosewater Supper Club, Six Steps and Scaramouche. He expects Boehmer to open in less than a month—about six months later than originally planned.
Jennifer Connelly hits the Rosewater Supper Club, where no one cares about the movies
We get it, she’s thin (Photo by Attit Patel)
Lesson learned on festival Day One: stop trying to make film discussion happen. It’s not going to happen! Shut up and down your sauvignon, you silly thing.
At the Rosewater Supper Club’s annual TIFF-off—a welcome cocktail for stars and suits (5 per cent former, 95 per cent latter)—the chatter is about how tiny, twiggy even, Jennifer Connelly looks in real life. Really? We haven’t learned this about actresses by now?
After Connelly’s in-and-out, we’re drawn to the next most photogenic face in the room. It happens to be possessed by a soap starlet, one Jacqueline MacInnes Wood, or Steffy Fraser on The Bold and the Beautiful. We’ve never seen the show, but her type of preternatural, pouty symmetry is snap-recognizable. Jacquie tells us she’s here to “enjoy everything the festival has going on, and maybe see some movies, too.” Like? “Well, I wanted to see this one”—this one being the night’s gala premiere, Creation—“but then…” She trails off, lifting a glass of wine.
Read the rest of this entry »
Getting a TIFF drink: a complete list of establishments open until 4 a.m. during the film festival
Drake of dawn: the Queen Street hotel is one of many spots open until 4 a.m.
Stalking celebs at TIFF takes a lot out of us—and, we imagine, avoiding us takes a lot out of celebs. The best way to soothe those festival blues or celebrate festival triumphs is with a few cocktails around dawn. Luckily, more bars than ever are serving late this year.
Why so many licences this year? David Brown, bar manager at the Drake Hotel, posits a theory: “The economy is a little tight in general, regardless of what the Bank of Canada says. Giving licences earlier is a benefit to the city and businesses.” He notes that the crowd typically thins out a bit around 2 a.m., with a fresh round of TIFFers coming in around 2:30 a.m. Richard Lambert, owner of The Social, echoes Brown’s sentiment: “We will see a good turnover in the crowds, with a second wave coming around 1:30.” Read the rest of this entry »
Globe Bistro’s Kevin McKenna and Eigensinn Farm’s Michael Stadtländer serve up an epic eat-local dinner
It was gastronomic ecstasy at the elegant “eat local” Globe Bistro Wednesday night, when Eigensinn Farm’s Michael Stadtländer made a guest appearance to heat up the kitchen with his former student, Globe chef Kevin McKenna. A portion of the proceeds from the lavish seven-course wine-paired feast go to the Toronto East General Hospital Foundation. “That’s where I’m going to go after my first heart attack from pork,” owner Ed Ho joked. We were relieved that lamb was the order of the evening.
Read the rest of this entry »
Rosewater’s former chef, Paul Boehmer, jumps on the Ossington bandwagon with his new restaurant
Ossified: The avenue is changed forever (Photo by Dawn Paley)
How much more can Ossington take? A lot, it seems. The avenue’s seemingly endless gentrification will take another step this summer when chef Paul Boehmer opens his first restaurant, Böhmer. After considering Queen West and Yorkville, the former Rosewater Supper Club chef set his sights on a 5,000-square-foot single-storey building at 93 Ossington Avenue. “I see a real surge of restaurants on Ossington. It’s bringing the whole street alive, and it’s full every day,” says the chef, whose credits also include Scaramouche, Atlas and, more recently, Six Steps. “If you capture a reasonable market—like, don’t charge $45 for an entrée—and keep it to a price range where people can afford it and hang out, they’ll keep coming back.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Follow Toronto Life on Twitter, Facebook and via RSS